Personalising A Kendama

Kendamas are all the rage now amongst students.  What IS a Kendama, you say?  It's a traditional Japanese toy made of wood!  Our first close-up encounter with a kendama was a small one that Big One got as a Children's Day's gift from his teacher.  Big One practiced really hard and seemed really serious about it, so we got a bigger, more standard size kendama soon after.  The price difference between the plain ones (raw wood handle + black ball) and the fancy ones (think lightning paint effects or Spiderman mask on the ball) was about $10-$20!  Fortunately Big One was convinced that the plain one was sufficient and Mummy promised to personalise it for him.

First off, let's imprint some initials on the plain black ball!  I did this using masking tape as the "stencil":

Masking tape "stencil"

Then, with a silver inkpad, dab on the silver!

Inked on

I happened to have some varnish on hand and gave this 2 coats of it, letting it dry completely in between and there you are, a simple way to personalise your kendamas!  These were made as gifts:

Customised Kendamas